New Balance is renewing its opposition to the far-reaching Pacific Rim trade deal, saying the Obama administration reneged on a promise to give the sneaker maker a fair shot at military business if it stopped bad-mouthing the agreement.

After several years of resistance to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a pact aimed at making it easier to conduct trade among the United States and 11 other countries, the Boston company had gone quiet last year. New Balance officials say one big reason is that they were told the Department of Defense would give them serious consideration for a contract to outfit recruits with athletic shoes.

But no order has been placed, and New Balance officials say the Pentagon is intentionally delaying any purchase.

New Balance is reviving its fight against the trade deal, which would, in part, gradually phase out tariffs on shoes made in Vietnam. A loss of those tariffs, the company says, would make imports cheaper and jeopardize its factory jobs in New England

“We swallowed the poison pill that is TPP so we could have a chance to bid on these contracts,” said Matt LeBretton, New Balance’s vice president of public affairs. “We were assured this would be a top-down approach at the Department of Defense if we agreed to either support or remain neutral on TPP. [But] the chances of the Department of Defense buying shoes that are made in the USA are slim to none while Obama is president.”

The company employs about 1,400 people at its five New England factories — one in Brighton, one in Lawrence, and three in Maine. Company officials say they are looking to add workers to those plants, and they see a major military contract, with potentially as many as 200,000 shoe orders a year, as a way to help reach that goal.

Nearly every piece of gear that military recruits wear is made in the United States, per a 1940s-era law known as the Berry Amendment. But for many years, athletic shoes were exempt, largely because of a lack of sufficient domestic options. Hoping to change that, New Balance and other companies worked toward making an all-American shoe. New Balance even purchased an expensive machine to make midsoles, a key component that was nearly always made overseas.

Reader Comments (19)

The University of California at Davis shelled out some $175,000 to consultants to clean up the school’s online reputation following an incident in which campus police pepper-sprayed student protesters, according to documents cited by the Sacramento Bee.

The high school Advanced Placement English class had an assignment: write a paper mimicking Jonathan Swift’s satirical “Modest Proposal” of the 1700s. The teacher called for the teenage students to closely follow the seminal text in which Swift called for poor mothers of Ireland to sustain themselves during a famine by selling their babies to wealthier families.

About 10 days ago, I first reported about the traffic stop and apparent cavity search involving a black couple in Aiken, S.C. The story has since taken off and spurred some interesting reaction back in Aiken.

Relative to the story about the drug trade in Chicago. A few months back I went to a community meeting where the topic was the rampant drug trade. While sitting amongst a bunch of tired and worn out looking folks whose lives have been intimately touched by this scourge, the local constabulary was joined by state and federal authorities as well as the local DA and a couple of local politicians. I was somewhat beside myself as the State rep pulled out a large map of the US with circles and arrows. These various notations on the map showed major ports of entry, routes of distribution and the end points of the drug trade of which my community was an end point. So they know the whole big picture of where when and how and their policy is to cut the tail off of the beast. The local constabulary will pull over the guy bringing the stuff in from out of state. Never hitting the big guy at all where it counts like say in the ports. Or say the banks.

TPP and TTIP are Corporate/Investor Rights Agreements camouflaged as trade bills and TPA violates the separation of powers guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution.More proof that Republican and Democrat government officials work together behind their phony partisan theatrics in Washington, to pass legislation that benefits the ultra-rich and corporate elite establishment at the expense of the general population with middle and working class Americans taking the biggest hit.

Exactly right on these so called free trade deals. Both parties serve their corporate masters in lockstep. These trade agreements are nothing more than job destruction/shipment programs for U.S. multinationals.

Looks like Europe's people are starting to realize how totally screwed they will be if their countries sign on to the phony trade agreement being pushed by the U.S. multinational's gofer in the Oval Office.